Croatia Closes Border Crossings With Serbia After Migrant Influx

The centers could register and screen those arriving, the United Nations agency said.

“Traffic is banned on the border crossings of Tovarnik, Ilok, Ilok 2, Principovac, Principovac 2, Batina and Erdut”, the ministry said in a statement.

More than 11,000 people have entered Croatia since Wednesday, when Hungary completed a razor-wire fence along the border with Serbia to keep the flow of migrants under control.

“Up to this moment, about 400 people have arrived at the Croatian border and they were accepted and registered by our police“, local search and rescue chief Zdravko Colic said.

The decision came after the refugees and asylum seekers switched routes from Hungary to Croatia after the government in Budapest dramatically increased security at its borders.

Scuffles broke out in two locations on the border with Serbia on Thursday after people were left waiting for hours for transport further north.

New border restrictions and a row over allocating refugees and migrants have exposed bitter divisions in the European Union over the crisis. Our capacities are full. Hungary is building a second fence along its southwest border.

Serbia’s main highway north into Hungary is already closed by Hungarian riot police on the border.

German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in a newspaper interview that Germany, Austria, Sweden and Italy can not bear all the burden of migrants coming to Europe, but some countries, mostly in eastern Europe, have opposed consensus on the distribution of migrants according to pre-determined quotas. Most, however, are trying to get to the country’s capital, Zagreb, and continue toward Slovenia.

The refugee crisis is getting worse, as Croatia and Slovenia follow Hungary’s example.

Slovenia Prime Minister Miro Cerar tweeted Thursday that his country is committed to protecting the EU’s external borders.

Meanwhile, in Paris, French authorities evacuated more than 500 Syrian and other migrants from tent camps and moved them to special housing as the country steps up efforts to deal with Europe’s migrant wave.

It remained unclear whether or how police would stop migrants, many of them refugees from Syria, from streaming through fields across the border away from official crossings, though their path across much of the frontier is made more hard by the River Danub.

It comes just a day after Croatia warned it did not have the resources to cope with an influx of migrants.